Subban and McIntyre Form Boston Bruins Tandem

On Tuesday, the team announced that netminder Anton Khudobin will miss approximately three weeks due to an upper body injury. Goalie Tuukka Rask has also missed time due to an undisclosed injury. He played as backup in the second game of the season, but he’s now set to miss two consecutive games.

The Bruins will rely on the tandem of Malcolm Subban and Zane McIntyre for the time being, which should be interesting.

The 22-year-old Subban was recalled on an emergency basis from the AHL’s Providence Bruins on Monday. He made his NHL debut two seasons ago for a loss against the St. Louis Blues in 2015 and has a total of 32 minutes of ice time.

That’s more than can be said for the 24-year-old McIntyre, who doesn’t have any NHL experience and was initially called up to back up Khudobin.

Khudobin left practice early on Monday and now it looks like he won’t be back until mid-November, while nobody seems to know how long Rask could be out. That could mean a significant workload for Subban and McIntyre, who’ll have to prove they have the capacity to play some serious hockey.

Likely, Subban will get most starts. He has spent the past three seasons with Providence and is 45-31-12 with a 2.40 goals against average and a .918 save percentage. He’s still in the position to put his first NHL game behind him, in which he coughed up three goals on six shots to the aforementioned Blues.

This could be a real chance for Subban to prove himself, especially as the Bruins start looking to him to become the backup for Rask on a more permanent basis. Boston has leaned on Khudobin more than they would’ve liked and pushing the Toronto-born goalie into the spotlight does have its benefits, so the Bruins could make the best of a bad situation.

Or they could collapse under the pressure.

By the way, Boston is also without centre David Backes. He’s out day to day with a “minor issue,” according to head coach Claude Julien.